


The proof is in my strength

by Qem



Category: Hikaru no Go, Whistle!
Genre: Crossover, Drabble, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-09
Updated: 2011-11-09
Packaged: 2017-10-25 21:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qem/pseuds/Qem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You wouldn't think a go player would be all that great at soccer, but Shindou was an oddball all round, apparently picking up the sport again to spite a colleague. (Post canon, both series)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The proof is in my strength

You wouldn't think a go player would be all that great at soccer, but Shindou was an oddball all round, apparently picking up the sport again in order to spite a colleague. How the spite came in, Mizuno wasn't quite certain, since he was of the impression that the grudge was over Shindou being a dumb jock? Mizuno wasn't sure how soccer was meant to resolve this. ("Yes, Sho, I get it" he said at night over dinner. "It's not me you need to convince. I just fail to see how the rest of the world can be convinced.")

Shindou had two specific strengths. Good eyes and a fairly decent ability to read people - it was slightly uncanny the way he could see through feints and out predict the opposing teams strategy on the field. Mizuno could see how it would be helpful in a board game... and Shindou had been just athletic enough, to move his body where he wanted it to be, despite the fact he hadn't been playing for several years to becoming a useful part of the team.

Mind you, it wasn't Shindou's skills that were the first thing Mizuno had noticed about him. When coming to visit Sho's team - an amateur mishmash of aspiring athletes and office workers not yet willing to give up the game, joining together for a winter tournament - that there was a mouthy bundle of opinions as the new reserve goal keeper. He wasn't quite sure how that was going to work out, Shindou seemed more disruptive - but oddly people seemed to like him well enough despite loudly broadcasting of his various vices.

Fate however stepped in. In one of their ranking matches when they were running short on players, Shindou had been thrown on the field as a mid-fielder. Perhaps if Sho hadn't been on the field, they likely would never have known, but as it was - the results were fantastic news to a team that had been struggling with deadlines.

Shindou's weakness had been that he tended to focus on one person at a time. (Which was why he was the reserve goal keeper - too easily distracted, some one had said. He could spot a deliberate feint [or even an accidental one, when a set of shoes had been badly chosen on grass just a little too wet], but when everyone started crowding around the goal, he crumbled - watching everyone.) However, he could read Sho and Sho could instinctively read and lead an entire game.

They didn't even need to talk or actively signal, much to the confusion of the opposing side. Sho was the superior player, creating space by being exactly where the opponent didn't want him, or exactly where he could assist a team mate. It was well acknowledged amongst the knowledgable that there was little chance of Sho remaining an amateur for long after this and it had only been his injury holding him back.

But Shindou... Shindou was like a ghost - turning up exactly where Sho wanted him to be, being the distraction that Sho required - all in the face of the forwards when Sho needed them hot and bothered, sneaking behind the defence when Sho needed to pass to someone closer to the goal. For once it was, someone assisting Sho and not the other way around.

Their team climbed up the rankings; Shindou proving further useful when his mouthy opinions were applied to analysing opposing teams strategy and his uncanny sense for dissecting the logic or lack of logic from the opposing sides was revealed.

Shindou was still a go player, and couldn't make it to every match, but it was clear that he was making a difference... And the scouts must have seen it too, offering a lucrative contract if both Sho and Hikaru would join... Though Sho still got decent individual offers, Mizuno was proud to note. Took them long enough to catch on.

Hikaru turned the offer down, citing that he had only joined the summer tournament to prove he wasn't a plagiarist.

Tatsuya and Sho had been baffled over it.

But when they were playing their final match, with the first of the autumn rains gently pouring down, at the end of a long day, as the sun set and the night began to fall, Mizuno in the sidelines proudly supporting his lover...

He heard in softly spoken Korean a bitter conversation, that Mizuno could follow more through angry gestures than the limited vocabulary he had picked up from senbatsu, that hinted of betrayal and rivalry and other deep emotions, by a man who looked at Shindou both with a fondness that turned bitter when he seemed to remember something new, who wore a sharp purple suit and had his hair neatly in a bob and a stylish k-pop prince who seemed intrigued and quite attached.

Shindou really was an oddball.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rewritten version of a response I made to hng_prompts on LJ (more detail!). It was based on two prompts. Akira x Ko Yongha, Sho x Mizuno - At the twilight of an autumn day, it rains softly.  
> Plagiarism.
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> This is one of those ideas where I write it about 8 times and it still comes out better in my head than on paper. D:  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
>  
> 
> Shindou told Akira about Sai.
> 
> Akira got angry and yelled the first thing that came to mind, plagiarism, which while not strictly accurate, was roughly a "you plagiarist! Playing someone else's game, and work and pretending it's your own! How can I know if your playing your own game?" more or less.
> 
> And refusing to listen to Shindou, going off in a huff, (where Yongha comes in), Shindou decides to show him that he is capable of hard work - in something where even if people tell you, you can't cheat at... And strategy is strategy right?
> 
> Except no one in the soccer team believed he was capable of it until he proved it to them, first.
> 
> Shindou's just a bit touchy about the words, so he gives a true, but illogical reason that no one but the directly involved parties, would understand. Because he can.


End file.
